The praying mantis has been my very favorite creature of the insect world since I was a kid running barefoot in our rural Connecticut meadow. I loved chasing after bugs and beetles with a net and would try to catch everything and that included praying mantises, a wondrous creature to me back then and they remain so now. These eye-catching, heading-turning, insects still grab and hold my attention, but now I just watch them and no longer try to catch them.

Praying mantises were not on my mind until last week when I encountered one perched on a wire fence in my field munching away on a freshly captured yellow jacket. It was an excellent location for the mantis to be hunting for a meal. The goldenrod flowers are in full bloom and the blooms attract all sorts of insects. The praying mantis is a skilled ambush hunter. They will eat most anything they can capture including grasshoppers, crickets, small frogs and, of course, other insects. 

They have enormous compound eyes compared to the size of their heads, can see in three dimensions and excel at detecting prey when it comes into striking range. For comparison purposes, our eyes would be as large as grapefruits if we had the same ratio of head to eyes as the praying mantis.

I hustled back to my house to grab my cell phone and camera before the mantis moved from its dinner-hunting location. I posted this short cell phone video of it dining on the yellow jacket to Facebook. Should you wonder, the yellow jacket was still alive when the consumption began.

Within minutes of me posting the video to Facebook, questions and comments started coming in, inspiring today’s Wilder Side of Oakland County nature blog. One of those questions was, “Why is it called a praying mantis?” That answer is easy and if you watch one closely you will know why as well. Praying mantises hold their forelegs in a folded position, giving the appearance of prayer.

The spelling of the name praying mantis causes confusion at times, and it did so for me before I became more closely acquainted with them in my naturalist role. Because they prey on live insects some think their name is preying mantis leading to that common misspelling, but the correct spelling is praying.

A bit of online research and fact-checking revealed there are about 2,000 mantis species around the world. Michigan only has two species of the praying mantis, known in plural as mantids. Those species are the European Praying Mantis (Mantis religiosa) and the Chinese Praying Mantis (Tenodera aridifolia). The mantis I encountered is the Chinese Praying Mantis, known for its forewings that are tan with a green front edge. 

I watched the mantis in my meadow for more than one hour and during that time it crawled very slowly in what I will call a stalking mode. I also noted it could keep its body perfectly still while turning its head slowly from side to side. Most likely that behavior is very beneficial for ambush hunting. But when I repositioned myself for a few more photos my shadow was cast upon it and it moved to a new location.

The praying mantis is more than a stealthy hunter; they are masters of camouflage, which adds to their hunting success. They blend in extremely well with their background environment and with their green and brown coloration, they are almost invisible when motionless on leaves or twigs, waiting for a meal to come close such as in the case of the yellow jacket I watched being devoured. Their camouflage and slow movements also give them the ability to stalk creatures as large as a ruby-throated hummingbird; a meal that is more than a mouthful. However, even with their excellent camouflage, they are consumed by frogs and birds.

These waning days of summer are an active time for the mantids in our midst, but they won’t be around for long. They die before winter takes hold, but a new generation is always assured. In the Midwest, they lay their eggs in late September and early October in a frothy substance that hardens into a protective casing that protects the eggs until hatching occurs next spring. Cannibalism is something of a family affair. Male mantises, I have been told by my entomologist friends, fight for the right to mate, but for the winner, it’s sometimes a one-time event with the male often consumed by its mate. When their very tiny babies, which may number more than 100, emerge in the spring their first meal is often one of their siblings and the cycle of life of this amazing insect continues.

Jonathan Schechter is a naturalist, eagle watcher and nature education writer for Oakland County Government and blogs about nature’s way on the Wilder Side of Oakland County.

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